Morning found Alessia Romano inside a guarded room with the stolen document spread across the table. Dante Vitale had spent the night tracing every seal and payment attached to it. Each path led back to someone she trusted. Walking away would keep her alive for a few days. Staying would give her a chance to take back the life that had been arranged without her consent.
Dante Vitale placed a contract beside the evidence. For thirty days they would appear united, share information, and never move without security. In return, he would give her access to the one archive capable of proving Dante paid the debt to keep Alessia alive after her own family ordered her execution. The final clause was strangely specific: neither of them could pretend the attraction between them was part of the agreement.
She laughed once, without humor. “You wrote a rule against falling for you?”
“I wrote a rule against lying about it.”
Their first public appearance turned into an ambush. Cameras flashed, enemies smiled, and a messenger slipped Alessia Romano a key engraved with the date of her greatest loss. The key opened a private deposit box containing photographs of Dante Vitale meeting the person who had destroyed her family.
She pressed the photographs against his chest. “Tell me why I should not leave.”
He did not deny them. Instead, he opened his shirt and showed her the scar beneath his heart—the same symbol printed on the forged document. “Because they did not only choose you,” he said. “They chose us both.”